April 27, 2011 — The MiQro Innovation Collaborative Centre (C2MI) will purchase three Akrion Systems GAMA automated wet process systems for the development and manufacture of advanced devices at C2MI’s state-of-the-art MEMS facility in Bromont Technoparc, Quebec, Canada.

The GAMA systems will be used for all of the wet processing requirements of the Centre. The systems will include Akrion Systems’ proprietary technologies for drying MEMS wafers with deep feature sizes and for controlling silicon etch kinetics.

Various MEMS and 3D wafer-level integration strategies using through-silicon via (TSV) require various wafer bonding preparation steps and bulk micromachining processes," said Luc Ouellet, vice president of technology development of Teledyne DALSA Semiconductor. "These three highly automated tools provide SMIF-based dry-in and dry-out interfaces to operators, thus reducing the risks to humans, ensure a technically sound solution to basic physical limitations of high aspect ratio TSV, allow various environmentally friendly process schemes and reduce the overall operation costs with responsible chemicals and de-ionized water utilization. We are also very pleased with the automated chemical delivery, real-time composition analysis and real time micro-contamination monitoring provided by the various integrated sub-systems of these three GAMA wet processors."

Also read: CMOS, MEMS meld enabled with advanced TSV, flexible interconnects

Akrion Systems provides advanced surface preparation process solutions and systems, including single-wafer and batch-immersion cleaning tools for the microelectronic, display and photovoltaic industries. For further information, please visit the Akrion Systems web site: http://www.akrionsystems.com.

The MiQro Innovation Collaborative Centre (C2MI) is an original partnership between Université de Sherbrooke, Teledyne DALSA Inc. and IBM Canada Ltd, Bromont Plant. The C2MI will be an international pioneer in packaging the next generation of microchips. Visit www.c2mi.ca to learn more.

April 27, 2011 — MEMS foundries shared unequally in the MEMS market’s robust 25% growth in 2010. Total combined revenues of Yole Développement’s annual ranking of the Top 20 MEMS foundries — which account for the vast majority of world’s total MEMS foundry capacity — climbed only about 10% last year, as companies doing internal production instead grabbed most of the big growth in consumer and automotive markets.

Figure. Top 20 MEMS foundries by 2010 sales estimates ($M). SOURCE: Yole Développement, April 2011.

STMicroelectronics continued to dominate the MEMS foundry business, capturing nearly a third of the total foundry market, but there was plenty of re-shuffling among the rest of the leading players in this highly fluid sector.

Silex Microsystems saw robust 85% growth to some $37 million in sales, to become the largest of the pure-play independents. Growth was driven by demand for its via-first, highly doped silicon TSV technology.

Sales at Asia Pacific Microsystems jumped some 60%, to move the Taiwan company into fourth position.

But in a market largely driven by demand for high-volume sensors for smart phones and other consumer gear, large MEMS IDMs with 8" lines and assured supply capability captured much of the new business. The IDMs also benefited from the robust recovery of the automotive market, as those qualified devices remain largely made in-house. Smaller fabless companies generally saw slower growth, as they had to compete with the giants for volume orders.

"In the future, the large IDMs like Bosch, STMicroelectronics and Panasonic will continue to capture much of the big growth in consumer MEMS markets," said Jean Christophe Eloy, CEO of Yole Développement. "And those foundries coming from the large-volume semiconductor industry will become more and more important. The foundry business will increasingly be in other hands than before, as much of the growth will be captured by new players."

Yole Développement estimates TSMC roughly doubled its MEMS revenues last year, to jump from about $10 million to about $20 million in MEMS foundry revenues. Other semiconductor industry companies like XFab, Jazz Semiconductor and UMC also saw healthy growth, though remain relatively smaller players. Though not yet large enough to make the list, SMIC’s MEMS foundry business is also growing, and GlobalFoundries plans an aggressive move into the MEMS market.

Though the specialty MEMS foundries may be serving lower-volume customers, those applications include much specialized, higher-margin business in optical, telecommunications and biomedical applications. "These foundries may not be seeing the same big growth, but they are making a good, profitable business," says Eloy. A large and growing group of these larger specialty foundries are separating themselves from the pack. Nine MEMS foundries now have revenues of about $20 million or more, and six of those are now doing more than $30 million in annual business. As recently as 2006, only five MEMS foundries reached the $20 million mark.

Sensonor vaulted onto the list in number three position, with $35 million in foundry business, as Infineon spun out the MEMS unit to make its tire pressure monitoring systems as a foundry. Texas Instruments (TI), meanwhile, slipped to fifth place from second, on the slowing of demand for ink jet heads from Lexmark, as the maturing inkjet printer market slowed and transitioned from disposable to permanent heads.
 
For more information on Yole’s reports and other products, visit www.i-micronews.com.

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April 26, 2011 — ULIS, a manufacturer of high-quality infrared (IR) imaging sensors for thermography, security, automotive and military applications, launched Pico640E, a video graphics array (VGA) 640 x 480 17µm IR imaging sensor that offers new advantages in size, performance and factor of merit. It provides camera manufacturers and other imaging-system designers with large format, small-form factor, uncooled IR sensors that optimize the trade-off between performance and sensor response speed.
 
Pico640E is a high-resolution (more than 300,000 pixels) IR imaging sensor that comes in a small footprint (24.13 x 24.13 x 5.57mm). In tests, it has demonstrated a high response speed with a thermal time constant of 8.8ms and a thermal resolution less than 45mK. This translates into a uniform pixel factor of merit (400 mK.ms).

It can perform long-range detection up to approximately 2km, depending on the target, as well as detect fast-moving objects. These performance advantages make Pico640E well adapted for military applications, as well as thermography, predictive maintenance and 24/7 camera surveillance, particularly for handheld goggles and ground vehicle situational awareness, said Jean-François Delepau, managing director at ULIS. ULIS’ series of 17µm IR microbolometers are leading the market in large format, small-pixel pitch IR imaging sensors, added Delepau.

The performance Pico640E achieves is also a plus for image-fusion applications, which use both visible and IR images. Visible sensors have a much faster response rate than IR sensors, so there is often a time lag between visible and IR images when the camera is panning. Due to Pico640E’s fast response rate, it minimizes the delay between visible and IR images when they are superimposed, thereby improving overall image quality.

IR specialists use thermal sensitivity and thermal time constant measurements to calculate the factor of merit in IR microbolometers. Thermal sensitivity or Noise Equivalent Temperature Difference (NETD) shows how well pixels convert input signals (IR light/thermal radiation) into voltage in proportion to the thermal radiation emitted by an object: the higher the thermal sensitivity, the better the image. Thermal time constant refers to the speed at which pixels respond to input signals. For IR microbolometers, a low thermal time constant enables lag-free images.
 
ULIS will display Pico640E at booth Number 503 during the SPIE Defense and Security exhibition in Orlando, FL, April 26-28.
 
ULIS, a subsidiary of Sofradir, specializes in the design and manufacture of high quality infrared imaging sensors for thermography, security & surveillance, automotive and military applications. It enables makers of consumer electronics and infrared equipment to produce low weight, low power consumption and cost-effective thermal cameras in large volume. For more information, visit: http://www.ulis-ir.com

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April 25, 2011 – PRWeb — Si-Ware Systems (SWS) announced a novel Self Compensating Oscillator (SCO) technology, which produces an all-silicon oscillator that can achieve an overall frequency stability better than 100ppm over a temperature range of -20 to +70ºC.

The SCO is an all-silicon oscillator that does not require an external frequency reference for frequency generation, and instead generates its frequency from an internal LC oscillator. As the name implies, the SCO is self compensated and achieves its stability without the need for analog or digital compensation. The stability is achieved with a low-cost room temperature only (RTO) trimming routine.

The SCO can achieve a frequency stability of 25ppm over a temperature range of 0 to 70ºC, which is inclusive of initial accuracy and temperature, supply, and load variations. This stability is a breakthrough for all-silicon oscillator technology and allows for a viable alternative to quartz or silicon MEMS (SiMEMS) based oscillators.

A clock oscillator in any electronic system uses a mechanical resonator, typically quartz or hermetically sealed SiMEMS. A conditioning ASIC is packaged together with the resonator to achieve the required oscillator clock output. By generating its frequency via an internal LC oscillator, the SCO eliminates the need for a mechanical resonator and is a single silicon die. The SCO has the advantage of being lower cost versus mechanical resonator oscillators as well as being more robust to shock and vibration as there are no moving structures.

The SCO’s output frequency is factory programmable and can generate frequencies from 1MHz to 133MHz. Operating voltage can be set to 1.8V, 2.5V or 3.3V, with current consumption in the single-digit mA range for frequencies up to 100MHz. The noise performance of the SCO is very good – at 125MHz the period jitter is 2ps RMS and the phase jitter is 0.7ps RMS (integrated 1MHz to 20MHz).

The SCO is a miniature silicon die that can be packaged in plastic with industry standard footprints. Alternatively, the SCO can be packaged with other ICs, allowing these ICs to eliminate the external frequency reference. Additional clocking circuitry, such as frequency synthesizers, can be easily added to the SCO creating a highly integrated, single chip timing solution.

SWS is currently preparing samples of its SCO technology for delivery in Q2 2011 to interested partners.

Si-Ware Systems (SWS) is an independent fabless semiconductor company providing a wide spectrum of product design and development solutions, custom ASIC development and supply as well as standard products, using MEMS, Analog/Mixed-Signal and Radio Frequency (RF) Integrated Circuits (ICs) expertise. For more information, visit http://www.si-ware.com.

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Update November 16, 2011 — Aurrion won the contract for the DARPA Electronic-Photonic Heterogeneous Integration (E-PHI) program to develop technologies and architectures to enable chip-scale electronic-photonic/mixed-signal integrated circuits on a common silicon substrate. Aurrion’s goal is to develop the necessary technologies, architectures, and design innovations to enable novel chip-scale electronic-photonic and mixed-signal integrated circuits on a common silicon substrate.

April 20, 2011 — Microelectronics scientists at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, VA, are reaching out to industry to find new ways of blending electronic, photonic, and micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) components on one silicon integrated circuit (IC).

The goal is to develop microelectronics technology for optoelectronic microsystems such as transceivers for telecommunications, coherent optical systems for laser radar (LADAR) sensors and communications, optical arbitrary waveform generators, and multi-wavelength imagers with integrated image processing and readout circuitry.

The DARPA Microelectronics Technology Office (MTO) released a broad agency announcement (DARPA-BAA-11-45) late last week for the Electronic-Photonic Heterogeneous Integration (E-PHI) program to develop technologies and architectures to enable chip-scale electronic/photonic/mixed-signal integrated circuits on a common silicon substrate.

Technologies developed in the E-PHI program should provide considerable performance improvements and size reductions over current state-of-the-art technologies, DARPA officials say. Of particular interest are low-noise electronic/photonic signal sources in the 20GHz radio frequency (RF) band and in the 1,000 to 2,000nm near-infrared (IR) optical band. These technologies could improve optical gyroscopes, direction finding, optical communications, and frequency reference synchronization for advanced high-bandwidth RF and mixed signal chip-integrated systems, notes DARPA. DARPA scientists anticipate that integrating photonics and electronics on a silicon substrate could produce compact optical oscillators, faster electronic feedback, enhanced coupling among photonic components, and better thermal and vibration tolerance.

First, these technologies must be manufactured on existing silicon CMOS chip fabs. Examples of potential approaches include micro-assembly, epitaxial layer bonding and printing, and direct epitaxial growth in silicon process flows.

The E-PHI is divided into three parts: heterogeneous electronic-photonic integration process and device technologies; heterogeneously integrated electronic/photonic architectures; demonstration microsystems. Industry proposals that address all three areas are of particular interest, DARPA officials say.

The aim of the first part is to develop fabrication and device technologies to integrate different photonic and optoelectronic materials on a silicon CMOS-compatible substrate. Modular approaches are of particular interest, DARPA officials say.

The second part focuses on architectures and design approaches that take advantage of heterogeneously integrated materials and electronic and photonic devices. The third part centers on demonstrating microsystems based on technologies and approaches developed in the first two parts of the E-PHI program — particularly continuous-wave and pulsed laser sources; RF optoelectronic signal sources; and other novel demonstration systems.

The E-PHI initiative is part of a larger DARPA program called Diverse Accessible Heterogeneous Integration (DAHI) to develop a manufacturable device-level technology for a broad variety of materials and devices — including electronics, photonics, and MEMS — with complex architectures on a common silicon substrate.